Only the outside light was on. Indoors it was pitch black. He made his way carefully to the nearest lamp and turned it on. Then he tiptoed to the bedroom and confirmed that Lydia was sleeping. It was after eleven.
He wasn't sure what had happened out there, on the road. By the time he recognized his own yard, and sprinted up the drive, the fog was gone completely.
Right now, safe at home with Lydia, he didn't care that there was no reasonable explanation. His fear and the energy it took to make the dash home had left him sweat-drenched and exhausted. Nothing was more important than sleep. He would pick up the car tomorrow.
Greg undressed, climbed into bed and nestled close behind his wife, listening to her steady breathing. In a way, he was glad she wasn't awake. He didn't want to have another one of those conversations: why couldn't he reach her by cell phone, and why had he gone to dinner with the Colquitts in the first place? They were having too many talks like that lately.
He had just closed his eyes and started to feel the tug of sleep, when he heard his stomach growl. He had eaten everything offered at dinner, and finished with a slice of that cake Marietta foisted on him, just to prove his appreciation.
He tried shifting his weight. He craved silence and sleep, but he was plagued by wild images darting through his mind every time he shut his eyes. He returned each time to the rabbit lying still on the asphalt. The heat from its insides made its eyes open. He rolled over and felt a wave of nausea. He managed to get out of bed and into the bathroom just in time.
Five minutes later he was still crouching in front of the toilet, heaving. The worst part, the most sickening part, was knowing that everything was just as bad as Lydia said it was. He was letting her down, in every possible way.
Once he was certain he had thrown up all the food in his stomach, and the dry heaves had subsided, he stumbled back to bed and curled up under the top sheet. Despite the comfortable temperature in the house, his teeth chattered. He cursed himself for being so childish. Why was he trying to make friends with people he would never have given the time of day under normal circumstances? Now he had gotten what he deserved: food poisoning. He lay under the sheet, miserably recounting the mistakes of the last few weeks, vowing to do a better job, to be a better husband to Lydia, and wondering how to get both of them out of this place. At last exhaustion overcame him and he slept.
In the morning he lay in bed letting his mind drift. Maybe he had hallucinated the fog, or the entire drive home. He had been dreaming after sleeping deeply, he was lightheaded and he couldn't say what was real.
He was troubled again by last night's dinner with the Colquitts. Clearly, Marietta was crazy. Greg couldn't get over the way she stared at him, standing there at the front door while he got in his car and headed home. She had followed him outside after he said he was worried about Lydia and needed to go. She had stopped him in the hallway and insisted that he take dessert with him. She was stalling, but why? After all that concern about Lydia, she wouldn't let him go.
"Your wife might be less upset with you, if you take her a slice of Alicia's cake," she said. "It's all homemade, even the coconut frosting. Wait here while I wrap up a piece."
Then, because he was too polite to say no, he had waited while she went to the kitchen and wrapped up the dessert in aluminum foil. He stood there, jingling his keys, dialing on his cell and getting no signal, until Marietta returned. She handed him the cake and said goodnight. Even then she seemed to be thinking of something to say, some way to keep his attention.
Marietta Colquitt was a loon. Greg wasn't letting her or her son, the big geek with his made-up religion and his stuffed animal heads and his gawky wife, get anywhere near Lydia or his baby again.
He thought about last night, and decided he had panicked. His car had broken down on the spooky old road with no lights and no people in sight. He ran into some temporary, freakish weather pattern and his imagination took over. It was stress combined with the strangeness of this place. The sooner they got out of here, the better.
He sniffed the air. Sweet, and pleasant despite his upset stomach the night before. In fact, he didn't feel nauseated. He felt odd, tingling all over.
Unmistakable, now that he recognized the aroma, and a world of childhood came flooding back with it: Gingerbread. Classrooms and chalk, the scrape of desks on hardwood floors in the two-story building where he had gone to school. Finger-paint, bubble gum, pencil shavings, the black tendrils of hair cascading from Didi Schuster's hair band onto the edge of his desk. The clatter of plastic cafeteria trays. The icy bite of January. Skating at Green Lake. Coming home sweaty and exhausted, falling into clean pajamas. The scent of fresh baked gingerbread, the only thing his mother knew how to cook from scratch. This was when he would talk to his mother, while she cooked. They were alone together and he could talk with her about anything.
"Honey? Are you ready for breakfast?"
Lydia was standing in the doorway, smiling, holding a plate with a slice of gingerbread on it and a cup of coffee. He stared with his mouth open.
"Aren't you hungry?" She asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Uh. Just a minute."
He shuffled to the living room window and looked out at sunlight sparkling in the trees and across the lawn. The Toyota was parked in the driveway next to the house. Before he could think of anything to say, Lydia told him:
"I saw the car a few yards down the road. You were sleeping, so I brought it home."
"You didn't have any trouble starting it?"
"No. I thought you had a flat, but everything looked okay. Whatever you brought home in that foil was a mess. I threw it out."
"Good move," said Greg. "Alicia Colquitt baked it."
"How nice," she said in a flat tone.
"Did you say you could see the car from the end of our driveway?"
"Yes. Why?"
He decided not to tell her about the fog. What good would it do? She seemed relaxed and happy. Why start more trouble?
"No reason," he said. "I just didn't realize I was so close to the house."
"Were you drunk?"
"No. No, I was fine."
"Good," she said. "Have some gingerbread while it's warm."
Burt
Burt stared straight up into the white blue sky. He was trying to imagine the forest as it once was, with its darkened canopy: nettles, branches and twigs entwined and dotted with bits of bark, stray leaves, moss. There were rodents, red voles, living up there. No need to visit the ground at all. Or maybe that was one of the stories the preacher had told him about how things used to be.
Now the sky burned right through. Only a few of the old trees survived. Briefly Burt railed against the men who harvested the wood. Then he lost his train of thought. He was a man in search of a place to hide, to forget, and he could find no sanctuary. Not even in church.
Whiskey burned his throat. He gagged and set the thermos aside. He put his back against the grooved trunk of a fir and walked his way down until he was seated on the ground. He held his rifle across his lap and glanced at the circle of trees. He had been here before, yesterday, or maybe last week. He was traveling in circles, and the trees were mocking him.
Nothing would bring his girl back, the preacher said. But that was a lie, as it turned out. Burt had seen her twice, dashing ahead of him through the woods.
A couple of miles away he had discovered the ruins of an outhouse with a deep trench. Nothing but a hole in the ground, full of shit and mud and dead leaves and a girl with a ribbon in her hair. She wasn't his Connie Sara.
He reached out for the thermos of whiskey. He stared up at the sky.
His daughter stood before him in a black pinafore and white blouse, her hair tied neatly with a red bow. She smiled and her scarlet mouth started to bleed. Blood ran down the sides of her mouth and between her broken teeth.
"Are you my little girl, my baby?" He asked.
And the girl said that she was.
Henry
Henry had
to ring the bell a third time. It didn't seem likely that both Lydia and Greg were gone, not with their car sitting in the driveway.
Finally the door opened, and Greg squinted out of the shadows.
"Hi there," said Henry. "I'm on my way back from visiting a parishioner."
Greg said nothing. He seemed to have trouble holding the door open.
"I was passing by on my way home," Henry told him. "I just wanted to make sure everything was all right."
He paused and Greg still said nothing.
"We haven't seen you since you came for supper, three weeks ago," Henry reminded him. "And I noticed there's no 'for sale' sign in the yard yet. I wondered how you and your wife were doing."
"Yeah," Greg said. He coughed. "I've had the flu. It's okay, I don't think I'm contagious any more."
Greg's eyes were bloodshot. He stood back to let Henry in.
As he stepped forward, Henry had the immediate sensation of passing from light and warmth into the darkness of a cave, where it was not cold but dank and with a thickness to the air that made him hold his breath. When he could breathe, he realized that his instinctive reaction had been right: The air stank.
Greg took a few steps toward the hallway and called out:
"Lydia! We've got company. It's, uh, Henry."
Henry turned toward the kitchen and the odor hit him full force. Through the doorway he could see the checkerboard linoleum. Breadcrumbs and dust were visible from where Henry stood. One corner of the countertop was covered in plates and glasses, all of them coated in layers of food scum. The hum of scattered flies told him the portion of the kitchen he couldn't see was in the same condition.
The longer he stood there, and he wondered how long he would be able to, the more Henry's olfactory glands were able to distinguish between foul odors. He could detect, apart from the decay of unwashed dishes, the aroma of human sweat mixed with blood, and the funk of urine and feces lingering somewhere unseen.
The living room was in disarray with soiled linen lying everywhere. The fabric on most of the furniture was stained. Ashes spilled forth from the fireplace into the middle of the floor.
Greg excused himself and walked away down the hall, calling his wife's name. Henry stepped forward enough to get a better view of the kitchen, confirming that every surface was coated with food and grime. In the center a soft circle of fruit flies formed a living cloud shaped like a twister, and a couple of fat blue flies wandered from one spot to another.
Henry had seen homes like this many times before. He had gone on charitable visits: to the ill, the mentally unstable, or those who simply couldn't wrestle with despair any more. He had seen poor families crammed into tiny quarters, apartments with no doors and no air conditioning, where people cooked their meals on a hot plate and the corridors reeked of fried fish and teemed with half-clothed children.
Yet in most of those places, on the faces of most of the people he found there, no matter how little he judged or how fairly and compassionately he doled out food, blankets, clothing, or the word of the Lord, he saw something that he didn't see in Greg's face. He saw shame, whether fleeting or constant, and often mingled with dignity and the knowledge that they were blameless. It was always there to some degree. Not here.
Greg returned a minute later, and shrugged.
"That's funny," he said. "I don't know where she went. She must have gone out for a walk. I guess. She's been cooped up here, taking care of me."
"How long have you been sick?" Henry asked.
"Oh, uh, I guess I started coming down with it right after I got home from your house," Greg said. "First I thought maybe the rich food disagreed with me, but it keeps hanging on. I've got a bug."
"That was a few weeks ago," Henry said.
Greg frowned.
"Was it? Oh, right. You told me that."
Henry studied Greg's expression and said:
"Greg, if you need anything, if your wife would like some help, you should know that my family is at your disposal, all three of us. You know, sometimes, getting ready for a baby, it can just overwhelm people. There's so much to do and to think about, one person, even two people, can't handle it all. I'd be happy to lend a hand. My wife would love to help."
Greg stared at Henry. He blinked. Then he said:
"All right. Well, we'll keep that in mind if we ever need it. Thanks a lot."
As Henry followed the driveway out to the road he took another look and realized that most of the grass had gone dry and yellow. The tulip bed had been plowed up, and the windmills and wooden geese lay in a heap at the far corner of the yard.
"Good riddance," Lydia said from the bedroom door.
"Shit! You startled me," Greg said. "I thought you went out for a walk."
"In this weather?"
"It's warm out."
"Too warm," she said with a wicked smile. "I can't stand the heat, right now. Let's stay inside and play."
Marietta
Marietta had a feeling Henry was doing what she had asked him not to do. Just that morning he had expressed concern about their neighbors. Alicia was, if possible, more innocent than Henry. She wanted him to pay the couple a visit, to check and see if they needed anything. Marietta warned them:
"We don't know these people, so if they want to keep to themselves, we ought to mind our own business."
Naturally Alicia objected. She had the thwarted instinct of a childless woman.
"They're out of their element here in the country," she said. "All the more reason why we should help in any way we can."
"Some people can't be helped," Marietta told her. "They won't take good advice when it's offered."
"Marietta," said Alicia. "This is Henry's calling, to reach out to people in need. You know that. No one is beyond hope. I think that's why you spoke with Lydia in the first place, isn't it?"
Her daughter-in-law's kind smile told Marietta that she had no idea why the older woman had changed her attitude toward their new neighbors. That was just as well. Marietta's words to Lydia had had nothing to do with reaching out or helping people in need.
She had given Lydia a warning, and that warning had been ignored. She knew that Lydia was lost the night she failed to show up for supper. Marietta was prepared, that night, to tell her everything. If Greg and Lydia insisted on lingering here, if they weren't going to sell their house and escape, she had decided to tell them the whole story. She owed that much to Beverly.
Then Lydia had snubbed the Colquitts. She had stubbornly stayed at home while her husband paid a social call. That was the night, then. That was what the girl had planned all along, and nothing Marietta had done could stop her.
Now Marietta drew a new line, a new circle around Henry and Alicia. She would protect them as well as she could. If Greg would listen to reason, she might be able to save him too. Lydia was already beyond reach. She had stupidly invited it right into her home.
Ever since Beverly died Marietta had been rising before dawn to perform the rituals Delphine had taught her. She mixed herbs and she burned sage and repeated the words Delphine had used, to keep the thing at bay. She did this for the safety of her two loved ones. This, she knew and Delphine had known, was the extent of her power against the thing that was invading Lydia and Greg. The best she could do was to keep it from her family and let it take the form it wanted, which might be Lydia's baby or Lydia herself if it had the strength. It wanted to be born. It wanted to be strong. It also wanted what Lydia owned. It had slowly made its way to her, and now it was at home.
"Did you talk to the wife?" Marietta asked Henry when he finally returned from making his rounds.
"Lydia wasn't there," Henry said.
Marietta considered this.
"Mother, I don't want to scare these people away," he said. "I think they need help."
Marietta nodded. She sometimes wished she had a son who could see what she saw, or at least listen and understand and not respond by locking himself in his room at night and whispering prayers
to fall asleep. She accepted Henry as a decent and righteous man who both believed in a merciful savior and was afraid of the dark.
"It's all right, son," she told him. "You did a good thing, checking on those young people."
Henry paused and then said:
"They need help, but Greg didn't seem to care. It was strange. Maybe he just didn't notice because he's been sick with a flu bug or something. He's been sick since the night he visited with us, but he hasn't seen a doctor. Everything seemed so uncared for. Not only the kitchen and living room, but the yard, the grass."
Marietta waited. She held back any comment until he finished.
"I drove past their place about half a dozen times in the past three weeks, and I never noticed the grass going yellow. Maybe I saw what I expected to see. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. I don't know. What do you think?"
Marietta nodded. If this was the explanation that gave Henry peace of mind, so be it. He couldn't handle any more than that.
"You did all you could," she told him. "And we'll be here if they need us."
Greg
By the end of his third week of illness, Greg was too weak to drive. He asked Lydia if she felt like giving him a ride to the doctor, but she said the car was acting up again. She asked if he wanted her to call an ambulance, because she would be happy to. He couldn't bring himself to do that, so he said what he had been saying for weeks:
"Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow."
Lydia fluffed his pillows and cooked homemade lentil soup. She read him the news online and kept an eye on his email in case of job offers or interviews. There were none. She cleaned and baked, and she kissed him on the forehead and checked his temperature. She called the doctor while Greg snoozed, and she reported his latest advice.
Every morning he felt more tired. His joints ached and he ran a constant, low-grade fever.
"I'll have to get up and go to the store soon," he said one afternoon.
Knock Knock Page 23